The Strong Breed is one of the best known plays by Wole Soyinka

Wole Soyinka

Akinwande Oluwole "Wole" Soyinka is a Nigerian writer, poet and playwright. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, where he was recognised as a man "who in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence", and became the first African in Africa and...

. It is a tragedy

Tragedy

Tragedy is a form of art based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure. While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of...

 that ends with an individual sacrifice for the sake of the communal benefit. The play is centered on the tradition of egungun

Egungun

Egungun is a part of the Yoruba pantheon of divinities. In the indeginous religious system of the West African tribe of that name, the spirit is of central importance...

, a Yoruba festival tradition in which a scapegoat of the village carries out the evil of the community and is exiled from the civilization. Eman, the play's protagonist

Protagonist

A protagonist is the main character of a literary, theatrical, cinematic, or musical narrative, around whom the events of the narrative's plot revolve and with whom the audience is intended to most identify...

, takes on the role of "carrier", knowing it will result in beating and exile.